Punisher – Welcome Back, Frank available from Amazon for $18.24
Time to check out the first run of Punisher by Ennis. It starts off with the Welcome Back, Frank storyline, which may seem familiar if you’ve seen the Punisher movie from a few years back. They adapted some of it from the Ennis run.
As much as I love the rest of Ennis’ Punisher stuff, I had a tough time getting into this run. I’ve always felt the Punisher doesn’t work that well in the Marvel universe, so having him up against Daredevil and so on, I dunno, it seemed awkward. The humour in it seemed a bit off, it felt to me like Ennis was trying to find the voice of the Punisher and the comic and he didn’t quite have it yet.
On the plus side, he does punch a polar bear in the face, which is one of the best single frames of a comic ever.
Anyways, it’s worth reading just to understand what’s going on in the second Ennis run. It’s not a bad story, it just seems to be a story struggling to find itself. In comparison to the majority of the Punisher comics I’ve read in the past, it was still a considerable improvement.
3.5/5.
